


The Wound is an Echo

by monsterq



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Cissexism, Hurt/Comfort, Nine/Jack/Rose if you squint, Other, Rape, Torture, Trans Character, Transphobia, Whump, with limited comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 08:44:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2342279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsterq/pseuds/monsterq
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow, the fact that they're human makes it worse.   She thinks maybe if they were scaly, or eight feet tall, or had twelve eyes—but no, the hands that buckle them firmly into place and the eyes that check over their work with brisk precision are just like hers.<br/>If she feels betrayed, maybe she won't be so scared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wound is an Echo

**Author's Note:**

> More detailed warnings at end notes.

The chemical blindfold wears off last for her.  The Doctor and Jack don't tell her that, but she knows their bodies will always win, and—even though they try to hide it—she can hear their voices change a little as sight comes back to them.  As for her, when shapes of light and dark begin to filter into her vision, and finally focus and settle into clarity, her shoulders are already aching and twinging. By her best guess they've been left here about an hour now, her arms chained up behind her back.

She blinks hard, looks around. Jack and the Doctor are to her left and right, bound like her.  The room is bare, no furnishings but a filthy drain, which she tries not to look at, and the places their own restraints attach to the wall.  There are no windows, but she knows they're still above ground, because the stumbling walk was level the whole way here.

She licks her dry lips and tries a smile.   The others smile back. There's a groove of worry between the Doctor's brows that he can't quite manage to hide, but he's doing his best to draw attention away from it with his usual manic grin.  It would probably work, too, if she were anyone else.

"Was wondering when you'd be back with us," he says.  His eyes don't stray from her face, and she can't help being grateful.  Their clothes were taken from them when they were chained, with what seemed like dozens of anonymous cold hands stripping her to her underwear impersonally.  They ignored her protests, were careless of where they touched as she shivered and did her best to make herself small, to squeeze into the corner of her consciousness farthest from their hands. And there went the Doctor's screwdriver, and whatever other tricks he had hidden in his endless pockets; Jack's weapons, too, and her phone.

She feels so exposed now, vulnerable and chilled.  It's ridiculous—Jack probably doesn't care, and it's not like her t-shirt and a pair of cut-off shorts would offer any protection against these men—but god, the air is touching every inch of her uncovered skin, and she can still feel the echoes of those hands.

The space is dry and cool. The bindings dig into her wrists. It hurts vaguely, distractingly, and she can feel her heart thrumming in her throat like a tiny bird beating its wings against the walls of her bloodstream.

"Rose?" she hears the Doctor say quietly, and she remembers to speak.   "Yeah, hey." Her voice doesn't crack.  "I just like to keep you on your toes, that's all."           

They're down to their underwear, just like she is.  They look calmer than she feels, but there's tension in Jack's jaw and muscles standing out in the Doctor's forearm.

Jack, next to her, is too quiet. He spent the first half hour of their imprisonment alternating between mocking their wardens and searching their cell for ways to escape.  But as time passed he went gradually quieter, and paler too, like the effort of keeping everyone's spirits up was, for once, draining him.  Now he hasn't spoken a word in twenty minutes at least, and his hands clench and unclench restlessly in his manacles, tendons standing out harshly in the cold light.  He's gone somewhere in his head, somewhere far away, and she wonders if his desperate banter was meant to distract him as much as her.

With the Doctor, she's getting a lot of practice at being afraid.  Probably she's outpaced everyone at home.

 

 

—

Rose is shivering slightly in the cool air of the prison.  The Doctor looks away; they could have at least left them their clothes. Of course, if they had, they would be out of here by now.  But anger is easier than guilt.

Their captors have returned.

He clenches his jaw to keep from shouting as they unchain Rose from the wall and drag her away, but he can't stop the helpless lunge of his body.  Like if he tried hard enough he could reach her, save her—or like physical proximity could help, at all. 

She keeps shuddering, bumps raised on the surface of her skin.  As they manhandle her toward the center of the concrete floor she hunches in on herself, her shoulders flexing like she'd be crossing her arms over herself if they weren't trapped behind her back.

Beside him, Jack is tense all over, his arms straining against the cuffs, and the Doctor can smell the tang of blood when his abraded skin breaks with the friction.  None of them are speaking, just the uneven sound of their breath, the scuff of feet against the ground and the clanking of their restraints as they pull.

Stopping in the center of the room, they anchor her arms, bound tightly behind her back, to a chain hanging from the ceiling.  It's high enough that when they let go, to relieve the strain on her shoulders, she's forced onto her toes, wobbling.

Distantly, he realizes he's gone into respiratory bypass.  He doesn't much care.

She's not looking at any of them, just staring ahead, biting the inside of her cheek, not quite trembling.

The first time they hit her, a hard back-handed blow across the face that leaves a spreading red stain over her cheek, she only gasps.  Jack, too, sucks in air through his clenched teeth.  It's the Doctor who shouts.  "It's me!  It's me you want! I'm in charge! Why are you hurting her?"

"Don't—" she whispers, quiet enough that he might just be the only one who hears.

"We know that, Mr. Doctor," says the straw-blond man.  "That's why you get to watch."

When they turn back to hit her again, Rose looks up and glares.  "You don't get to use me to hurt him," she says.   "It won't work."

The Doctor yanks uselessly at his bindings.  If only they'd left him his clothes.  Even without the screwdriver, he could have found something to help in his transdimensional pockets.  But he's got nothing, just himself and his hands and his brains— _and that should be enough, think, idiot, think_.  But he can't think.  Not with the way—

Jack catches his eye, as if to say, you've got me too, we're in this together.  But it doesn't help.  Jack's just another person getting hurt because of him.

There's a sickening crack as a fist slams into Rose's jaw.  "Doctor, it's—" she coughs, spits out blood.  "It's all right."

He smiles weakly back at her, though he doesn’t think she sees it.   One lie for another.

"Okay," says the blond man.  "Now that we've got your attention.  You were apprehended conspiring against your country."

"It's not technically ours, actually," says Jack.  Not that that will make a difference.

"Right," the man says.  "I'm sure.  Now, we've got a lot of experience in dealing with this sort of thing.  We know what works, and what doesn't, and at this point, we've got a procedure."

"S'pose you're going to tell us what it is," mutters the Doctor.

He gives him a hard look. "Maybe, maybe not. Like to be clever, do you? Won't do you much good, not here.  Well, this is how it's going to go.  You're going to give us everything you know about the other traitors and their plans, and until you do, I'll see if I can carve it out of your friend here. Well, I say friend."

"I'm not—she's not—" he swallows.  Locks away a part of himself, until he can look up with cold eyes.  "You've got it all wrong.  She's not my friend, or whatever else you've got in that head of yours.  She's nothing special.  I just like having people about to talk to.  That's all."

Rose doesn't look up. But she knows. She'll know.  She knows.

The man's mouth twists sardonically. "I'm sure."

"But—"

"No.  Nice try, but no.  The jobs we have, you think we don't know how to read people? You, you two—you three, really—you've got it written all over your faces. The way you looked back there, and you try to tell me you don't care? Just how stupid do you think I am?"

He doesn't answer.

"Look, like I said, we've got a way of doing things.  You're going to watch us hurt your friend until you feel more compliant, and if you continue to be uncooperative, we'll move the show in front of an audience, give the people a reason to stay loyal, and finish up.  We can always get the information from someone else, and they're likely to play nice after seeing what happens to you. If it comes to that. All right, are we all on the same page? Good."

It's not good. He's actually having trouble thinking of a less good situation, right now, even though he's sure he's been in one, some time in his nine hundred years.  Why didn't they pick him to hurt, for Rassilon's sake? Why did he have to be so obvious about his affection? He knew it'd put them in danger, it always does, again and again and again, if he'd just left her alone she'd be safe in her home right now, watching TV...

He clenches his fists hard enough to hurt, and brings himself under control.  There will be time for a crisis of guilt later. Now, what his friends need is for him to concentrate on finding a way out of there.

The men are walking around Rose now, in a slow circle.  To his left, the Doctor can hear Jack's slow, controlled breathing. He's quieter right now than he's been in all the time he's known him, seems like, and the worst part is, it's now that the Doctor longs for some mouthing off and scathing jokes. Unwise as that might be. They know, all of them know exactly how unwise.

"Now that we're all sorted," says the blond man, and on his signal, someone yanks hard on a chain dangling from the ceiling.  The length attached to Rose's arms abruptly shortens, forcing them higher, higher than they're meant to go.  An abrupt, strangled yell is forced from her throat before she stifles it, panting. The Doctor can't stop himself from diving forward, an aborted motion that only makes his captors laugh.

"Ready to talk?" asks the leader.

He's never felt so powerless. "I've got nothing to say," he tells them.

The man smiles.

There's a table they brought in with them that he's been trying not to look at.  A metal tray on four wheeled legs, holding a meticulously organized selection of implements.  When the man nods, his assistant reaches over and picks up a black, blunted instrument with a shining tip.   Jack draws in his breath, harshly.

"One more time," says their captor.

"My name is the Doctor," he says helplessly.  "I just came here this morning."

The assistant turns and drives the implement into Rose's unprotected side, and a harsh buzz mixes with a choked cry.  It's the sort of sound he never wanted to hear coming from Rose's throat.  She curls away from the contact, her body tensing like a wound spring, and the air wafts over to him the pungent scent of burning flesh.

The man lifts the instrument from Rose's skin.  A wide, red mark and a mess of melted skin.

"Stop!" the Doctor growls. "Stop, I've told you, we're travelers, we don't know anything!"

"Well, let's make sure of that, shall we?"

The brand burns Rose's flesh again, and again.  He can hear the way her skin burns and sizzles, smell the cooking meat.  They keep smiling. 

However hard he fights against his bonds, he can get no closer.  Jack is yelling now, his voice twisted in rage as he calls them names. Rose is twitching, fighting to remain on her feet between the strain on her shoulders and the pain of the burns, and noises are making their way from her mouth, small helpless ones that he doesn't think she's even aware of.  Why can't he make this stop?

"Look," he says, "Okay, I'll tell you, my name's John Smith, there's going to be a meeting outside town in three days, and—"

"Lying to me," the man fixes him with a look, "does not help your cause." and with that, he grabs the chain and pulls on it with all his weight.

Rose's arms fly into the air, and with a sickening crack, her shoulders dislocate and she's hoisted higher, off her feet.  She screams this time, really screams, thrashing against her own body, sobbing with the agony of all her weight dragging her dislocated joints further out of place.

Jack screams, too. "What the fuck do you want, then? You don't want the truth, you don't want him to lie—what's he supposed to do? What the fuck is he supposed to do?"

"He's _supposed,_ " another tug, "to provide information on the terrorists.  Or any of you, if you feel inclined.  Now, let's try again."

And it goes on. The Doctor can feel the time passing endless and inexorable.  He tries to block it out but can't quite manage to.

The next instrument is a whip, synthetic material with barbed wire woven through.  The blond man picks it up with a crooked grin, weighs it in his hand.  He grabs one of her ankles, twists the foot up to face him.  And the sound the lash makes as it cuts through the air, the muscles of his arm, he can't— The man thrashes her again and again, the skin flaying from the soles of her feet, blood now dripping thick onto the floor. She screams, can't stop screaming, twisting away, unable to escape the pain now coming from all directions.

The man keeps smiling. The Doctor wants to tear the expression off his face with his fingernails.  It's a cold and painful knot inside him, his whole body warping inwards, the rage—the need to kill him.  Kill them.  Slowly.

He thinks he's shouting, but he can't be sure.

Jack is yanking still at his bonds, crying out, his words incomprehensible but for the rage they contain. Everything seems so slow and fast at once.  It's all a blurry, impossible fog, yet every detail is crystal clear.

Each time the blond man flogs her, her skin parts a little more. They're caverns, running across the soles of her feet like canyons with the sides pale and jagged and oozing blood; she spasms helplessly with each blow, her face open and altogether out of her control.  Each sound she makes is raw and uncontrolled.  Worse, they're all different, and he doesn't think he'll ever forget a single one.  He could sew a tapestry now of Rose's pain from memory—the sounds, the smells, the way she looks. He wishes he could forget, but he also knows that even if he could, he wouldn't let himself.  He doesn't deserve that relief.

Every time he blinks, he sees death painted on the insides of his eyelids.

A while later, they pull out the knife.  It's serrated, about nine inches long, and gleaming.  The Doctor's throat has closed, stiff and horrible.  Rose's face is blotchy and stained with salty tears, her breath coming ragged and sobbing through her mouth, but she doesn't beg. She hasn't once begged.

His wrists hurt, distantly.

He's given up on saying anything. Nothing that he's tried has made any difference, none of the truth, none of the lies, and every time another attempt fails his stomach clenches into a tighter knot.  Maybe in another life he'd think of the right thing to say, the angle that would make them stop.  But there's nothing.  No matter how much he searches.  Nothing. And what use are all those brains, if they fail him now?

They ask another question—he doesn't really listen—and press the blade to her face. It traces a path across her skin, down her cheek and across her lips.  "Open," the man commands softly.

She shakes her head, clamping her lips shut.  Her shoulders are swollen now, misshapen.  The man grabs her jaw and forces it down, pushing the knife past her lips and across her tongue, to the back of her throat until she jerks and gags. Red-tinted saliva trickles from the corners of her mouth.

"Suck."

She doesn't. He pulls the knife from her mouth and slaps her across the face with the flat of the blade.  It leaves a smear over her skin, damp and bloody. Her whole body jerks again with the impact, and she screams as the movement jars her shoulders.

The man laughs. He doesn't seem to care much about his questions anymore; they come less and less frequently, and he hardly waits for an answer before continuing.  It's not the point now; maybe it's never been the point. 

The Doctor wants to look away, but he doesn't allow himself that luxury.  If he can do nothing else for her, he can at least bear witness.

The knife traces down her neck, across her collarbone.  There, it makes a cut.  She barely moves, but her eyes close and her mouth tightens.  Beside him, Jack pulls again at his cuffs.  The Doctor can smell their blood mixing in the air.

Another cut then, a deeper one. It follows the line of her ribs, between the bones just underneath her clavicle.  She hardly reacts now, just breathing shallowly, a map of creases carved deep along her forehead.

The blond man lifts the knife and turns to look at the Doctor.  His face is unreadable; then he smiles slightly.  In one movement, he turns and drives the serrated blade deep into Rose's side.

The Doctor knows he's yelling now, but he can't hear the sound coming from his throat.  Beside him, Jack roars and thrashes, contorting and scrabbling at something frantically—then, suddenly, a blaster is in his hand.

There's silence. Rose hangs there, chest moving shallowly, blood leaking from her wound and sliding down her skin. Jack is twisted to the side, pointing the blaster at the blond man with one of the hands bound behind his back. It's very small, only one or two shots before recharge; it'll never work, he thinks.  Jack knows that.  Jack must have been saving it until there was no other option, hoping, maybe, the Doctor would find some way less likely to get them killed… He feels outside of himself, floating.  And the men are silent and still as they wait, their hands on their weapons. Their faces are blank and smooth.

In a moment—a moment too fast for a human to register, but that the Doctor observes with painful clarity—there's a crack, like thunder.  A light snaps out from the blond man's hand and wraps around Jack's gun.  It yanks it from his grip like a long, brilliant whip, and recoils back into the torturer's hand.

Jack's hand is empty; a red weal appears across it as his grip tightens on empty air.  His eyes focus on the hand that now holds the gun. His mouth becomes a flat line.

A thought floats across the Doctor's mind, slowly, more slowly than he's used to.  They would have had the best chance, maybe, threatening the guards with the gun when they all first entered.  But then, they had their guns too, and this world's military is unafraid of death. Maybe there's never been a way out. He wishes his brain would stop its useless churning.

"Well," says the man.  He yanks out the knife with a rasping slide, examines it, and wipes the blood onto her skin as her body twitches and contracts.  "Oh, don't look at me like that.  That wound won't kill her; I'm better than that.  We'll be keeping her alive a while longer." Dispassionately, he examines the gun in his hand.  "But I suppose something like this would happen sooner or later." The man looks around at his assistants. "I did tell you, didn't I? That leaving them places to hide undesirable implements was unwise? Well, now it's been proven.  Thank you—what's your name? Never mind.  My men won't be making that mistake again." He jerks his head at them. "Strip them."

The Doctor sucks in a deep breath.  He lets it out very, very slowly.

The men move forward, two to each of them.  A knife slices through the Doctor's black pants, pulling them from his body and leaving him exposed. The other man pats him down, putting his hands all over him.  Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the same happening to Rose and Jack.

Rose hangs there. Doesn't move, but for a tightening of her face as she is stripped of the remainder of her clothing. The Doctor looks away.

Beside him, from the men cutting off Jack's underwear, there's an exclamation.  "Hey! Would you look at this—it's a she!"

The Doctor closes his eyes, just for a second.

"I'm not a she, you medieval fuckwads," Jack snaps, as their captors all turn their heads. The easy wit usually present in his voice, even in the most hostile situations, is gone.

The blond man pivots on his feet, walks over.  "That's not how it looks to me."

"Yeah, well, it's not my problem you've somehow managed to be a post-light speed society that still associates gender with genitalia," Jack says.  "This is why I always avoided your backwards planet. If I wanted to hang out with a bunch of bigoted asswipes, I'd go back in time." Despite his belligerence, he's pale now, and sweating.

"And yet," the leader muses, "seems to me like it _is_ your problem.  You're all decked out in chains, and oddly enough, I don't seem to have any."

"It's because of your origins," Jack says.  His skin gleams in the pale light.  "You come to this planet to separate yourselves, in a fit of—of sulky bigotry, and your whole culture rises up from that example.  It's actually kind of impressive, how you've managed to hold onto all those outdated beliefs for so long."

"That's interesting," says the leader.  "Do you know what I think? I think you talk too much, for a girl-freak."

Every time they misgender him, the Doctor can hear a skip in Jack's now pounding heartbeat.  His own hearts are clenched tight in furious, helpless misery, and Rose, somehow, is still conscious, wetting her lips with her tongue as if to speak.

And despite the limitations of her culture, the Doctor knows what she'll say.  
He can't let her draw attention to herself.   He can't let any more happen to either of them—as if he has a choice.  (If he stops Rose, is he sacrificing Jack? He's not, is he?)

They try to speak at the same time, as someone is making an adjustment to Jack's chains.  Their mingled voices tangle together in the close room, and through his own half-formed distractions, wheedling, and arguments he catches phrases like "leave him—" and "it's not—"

The leader jerks his head, and two men peel off the group to take grey rags from the metal table and stuff them unceremoniously into both their mouths.  The cloth tastes foul, and he wills himself not to identify the components of what he's sensing.

Jack's chain is lengthened, and he's forced to his knees.  He's breathing hard through his nose, his jaw clenched.    _No._

"It's been a while since I've seen a freak like you," the leader says thoughtfully. "We don't have them here, see." He brushes a hand across Jack's hair—Jack jerks away, growling, but the leader grabs a clump of hair in his hand and yanks him back. He uses it as a handle to turn Jack's head from side to side, examining him.  "We teach our people better than that."

"Then I'm glad as hell I'm not one of your people," Jack says.

"You feel that way now," the man says.  He releases Jack's hair.  To his men, he says, "We're not getting anything else from the blonde anyway. Come on." His hand goes to his belt, and he starts undoing the buttons of his trousers, one by one. _No._ "Hold him still.  And you—" addressing Jack, "if you bite I'll just try my luck on your friend, you hear me? And I'll pull every tooth out first."

Jack's face is blank. The man shakes him. "Do you hear me?"

"I heard you," Jack says. An odd, twisted smile flits briefly across his lips and is gone.

A muffled noise comes from Rose, but nobody looks over.  ( _No, no no—_ )

"Good," says the man, and reaches in to pull out his cock.  It's flushed slightly, half-erect.  He thumbs Jack's chin, nudging it open, and strokes himself the rest of the way to hardness.  When he pushes in ( _NO)_ , Jack's eyes remain open, staring ahead of him, seeing nothing.

The man groans when he reaches the back of Jack's throat.  "That's good." he pulls out again, resting the head of his cock on Jack's lower lip.  Precome and saliva smear across his skin.  "Lick it," he says, and Jack does.  His tongue swirls around, laves up the vein on the underside, and flicks over the tip.  The Doctor doesn't want to watch, but he doesn't know what else to do.  The man thrusts back in.

"It's good," he says to his men, beginning to pant as he sets up a steady, hard rhythm. "You ought to take this for a spin once I'm done with it."

Some of the men look squeamish, but others are interested, already leaning forward as they watch. Jack never chokes, doesn't even seem to hear, his eyes blank and fists clenched as the muscles of his jaw and throat work around the intrusion.

"Suck it," the man says, "or I'll give them free rein on the others, too.  That's right.  Fuck, you're good at this.  Comes with the territory, does it? I guess if you're going to be like you, you have to be a little whore, because what else have you got going for you?"  He hisses, grabs two hanks of Jack's hair and grinds in deeper.

In front of him, Rose is crying silently, tears flowing down her bruised face and dripping from her chin. The Doctor feels numb, but the skin beneath his cuffs has torn with his pulling and all his insides are clenched and jagged, like a bag full of broken glass.  Even if he doesn't look, he can hear the rapist's exclamations, the wet rhythmic sounds where the two meet, and the almost inaudible, involuntary noises Jack's making at the base of his throat. He can hear Jack breathing through his nose, slow and even, and the shifting of his bare knees on the concrete floor.

The other men have come closer now.  They're touching Jack, feeling his naked shoulders, waist, ass.

Finally the blond man lets out a long, low groan and pushes deep, holding Jack's face against his groin as he comes.  He pulls out and tucks himself back into his clothes, while Jack makes a movement with his shoulder as if to wipe his mouth against the back of his hand.  His arms are still bound behind his back.

The other men look to their leader, and he nods.  They push Jack down, anchoring his arms to the floor instead, so that he's on his hands and knees. There are three men clustered around him now, their leader having stepped back, his hands in his pockets and a small smirk on his face as he watches.  He raises an eyebrow at the Doctor.  "I don't suppose you've changed your mind about providing information?" he asks.  "Nod or shake your head."

The Doctor's talents have never been so useless.  He wishes more than anything that he were an Avuborian, so he could shoot fire from his eyes, or a Rlkopsin, with a mind that can literally kill.  But he's not.  He's just a Time Lord.  He's got two hearts, and touch telepathy, four limbs and ten fingers and exceptional control over his body, and nothing at all that can stop these humans from torturing and raping his two best friends. 

The man watches him for a response, then shrugs.

Jack isn't bothering to resist. One man runs his hand through Jack's hair, drags his thumb over his face, his lips.  Another strokes his flat chest and belly. The third gropes at his ass and groin, pulling his legs apart, exclaiming to the others.  Jack's eyes close briefly.

Their hands fondle over his body and his genitals.  They pull and twist at the lips and phallus, press their fingers into the damp warmth of his crevices.  There's a hot pressure behind the Doctor's eyes, his throat constricted, guilt sitting heavy in his stomach and his jaw clenched hard enough to hurt.

"Toss you to go first," one of the men says.

The others exchange a glance, then one shakes his head.  "Go ahead."

The first man shrugs. "I won't argue." Casually, efficiently, he undoes his belt and trousers, releasing his penis, which is already aroused.  He spits into his hand and slicks it, then grabs Jack around the hips and thrusts all the way into him in one swift motion.  Jack's head drops between his shoulders as his body rocks forward with the impact. He braces himself on his fists, his knees and knuckles now leaving bloody streaks on the concrete floor.

The air of their prison, now, is thick with sweat, blood, and sex.  The Doctor would give a lot this minute to have senses less acute, but then maybe this is his punishment for leading his friends into such pain—to smell each new break of skin, to involuntarily identify each component of the soup hanging in the air.  To be aware, so acutely, of each facet of their violation—to hear the edges of their breath, the patterns of their heartbeats, to know each minute shiver and shifting of their bodies that they try to suppress.  It presses in on him, as if the whole universe is shouting and tearing at his senses, and each second ticks by in perfect, metronomic rhythm, impossible to ignore to his time perception.

The man is fucking Jack rapidly and with perfect regularity, piston-like, pleasure revealed only by his hands making claws and tensing on Jack's body and the twisting of his face. He lets out a grunt with each thrust, blunt and ugly.

One of the other men has undone his trousers as well, and is stroking himself, watching.

"You could always take the mouth," the other suggests.  "Or ass."

"Nah," he says. "I'll wait."

"I will, though," says the third man.  "That sounds good." He looks at Jack, considering, then taps Jack's face as he pulls at his clothes with the other hand.

"Open up. And keep your teeth to yourself, or you'll regret it."

The warning, at this point, is unnecessary.  Jack obeys dully, his eyes staring into deep space, entirely dissociated.  The man grips his jaw like a handle and inserts himself, giving Jack orders to suck and lick that he follows as if in a dream.

The two men push Jack between them, falling into a rhythm until he's rocking back and forth with the impact of their thrusts.  The smell of blood is growing ever stronger, and it's been a long time since any expression has crossed Jack's face.

Finally the man behind him swears, grimacing with pleasure.  After a few more, harder thrusts, he pulls out.  The Doctor can smell the fresh pungent odor of his semen.  He walks past, tucking himself back in, and gestures at the third man to take his place.

He does.  Not entering Jack immediately, he drags his fingers across Jack's genitals, spreading his cheeks and lips with his fingers and thumbing at the holes.  The swollen tissue in front must be sore, and the man takes pleasure in prodding at it as it slowly leaks his counterpart's semen mixed with blood.

When he does slide into Jack, he doesn't do it fast or all at once, but slowly, moaning softly as he presses deeper.  At last he fully seats himself with a sudden, swift jerk, and grins as Jack twitches and tightens convulsively.  He sets up a slow but bruising pace, his hands roaming across Jack's body, touching his shoulders, his nipples, the spot where the two of them join. In front, the second man is fucking Jack's mouth at a similar pace, mostly silent but intermittently letting out dark little noises.  None of them talk.

The men not participating are standing aside.  One is looking down, playing with a knife in his hands, flipping it over and over and spinning the handle between his palms.  His forehead is wrinkled.  Another is sitting down, adjusting his shoes, occasionally flicking glances up at Rose, in her blood-streaked silence.  A third is watching the rape, his arms crossed over his chest and his face unreadable.  The leader, still, is watching and smiling.

The man behind Jack speeds up at last, the sound of flesh slapping against flesh loud and ugly in the near silence.  He moans again, hitting Jack once to make him squeeze involuntarily around his cock. "Yeah," he says, the groan there in the back of his throat, and comes.  So does the man in front, plunging deep and staying in for a long time until Jack jerks, convulsing and reddening from lack of air. Then the two pull out and let go, leaving him to collapse to the ground between them, semen, saliva, and a trace of blood dripping in strings from his mouth, his arms shaking. "Thank you," says the first man.

The leader walks forward and kicks Jack over onto his back, arms twisted.  Thoughtfully, he rests a boot on his prisoner's throat, gradually increasing the pressure as he grinds in the dirty, ridged heel.  Jack's hair is going sticky with fluids and blood from the floor, and his eyes are closed.  "All right," says the leader.  "What—"

An arrow hits him square in the chin, punching through the soft underside of his jaw and up into his brain. The door bursts open.

It all happens very quickly. In a moment, the room is full, their captors on the floor or pressed up against the wall with weapons to their chests.  Two of the newcomers go to Rose, and she screams as they release her chains and lower her slowly to the floor, their hands carefully impersonal.

More of them go to release Jack and the Doctor.  It's all so fast; his mind seems, for once, to have screeched to a halt.  A weight falls across his shoulders. It's a blanket, large and soft, and he sits up and wraps the material around himself.  To his left, another has been given to Jack. It drapes around him, but he hardly seems to notice.  Rose is provided with a third, but with her dislocated shoulders and many wounds, she can't move to adjust it.

"We need to go. Now." the speaker is one of their rescuers, her clothes plain and her mouth held in a tight line. "I'm sorry we couldn't get here sooner.  Can you walk?"

He drags his mind to bear, discarding all the distractions that swirl within it.  "I can.  Rose can't.  Jack shouldn't, either."

She nods, and produces two stretchers.  Rose, now unconscious, is loaded onto one, and Jack onto the other—he's still absent, staring into space, barely breathing.  The Doctor struggles to his feet and nearly falls, knees trying to give way, but he locks them and moves forward.  He has no excuse for weakness, not now.

"We just need to get out of the building," the woman says.  "Then we can teleport to base.  Come on."

He does.  Their captors are all now dead, unconscious, or bound; some rebels pick up Jack's and Rose's stretchers and walk from the room. Others remain behind, standing over their former captors, faces grim.  The Doctor follows after the stretchers bobbing before him, the sound of cheap shoes sounding on concrete floors, the efficient dance of too-late escape. _No. Not too late.  We're alive._

The halls, which they walked down blindfolded just hours before, are eerily empty.  Their guide takes one turn after another with confidence, followed by the Doctor and the people bearing the stretchers.  They come at last to the heavy outer doors; she holds them open until they're all passed through.  Then a teleporter is looped around all their necks, and in a flash and a lurch, they're in a cramped, dim room, the floor layered with knitted rugs and two small flowerpots on a shelf.

Jack sits up on his stretcher, seeming now to see the room around him.  "Hello," he says to his carer, or tries to; his voice is cracked.  His smile is equally unsuccessful.

"We've an infirmary down the hall," says the woman in charge.  But the Doctor, finding his voice, interrupts.  "I'd rather—care for them myself, honestly. I've all the equipment I need on my ship, and I'm fully trained.  I don't guess you could teleport us over to it?" Belatedly he remembers about manners and says, "Thank you, very much, for getting us out. It was very good of you. But I'd really like to—"

"—Go," the woman agrees softly.  "So would we all. No, yes, of course.   Here are your things; we picked them up on the way out. Do you have the coordinates?"

It's more than he dared to hope.  He plucks his screwdriver out of the pile, something like comfort swelling in his chest, and points it at her device.  "There. Could we—"

"Yes," she says. And five seconds later, they're outside his ship, his beautiful, beautiful ship, and he's fumbling for the key.

Inside, the TARDIS is humming with painfully intimate worry.  He directs those holding the stretcher through the console room—they at least keep their exclamations of wonder to a private murmur—and through the first door in the hallway, which is now, of course, the medbay.  Once Jack and Rose are laid down on the beds, he shoos out their rescuers in favor of privacy, the twinge of guilt this causes barely noticeable in the full-body ache of shame.

Jack struggles up to his elbows. "Hey, Doc—I don't need anything, really, you can just—"

"Lie down," he growls. "Don't you be pulling any tough-man stuff, either.  Hold still." He hooks up IVs for both of them, adding fluids and a drug for the pain.  "This'll stop it hurting, mostly," he says, trying and failing to inject casual cheer into his voice.  "And if you let it, it'll put you right to sleep.  You don't have to keep thinking now if you don't want to.  Just check out for a bit, okay?"

Jack wavers, and the Doctor can almost see all the agonized layers of conflicting emotions and needs rolling through his brain.  Then he gives a defeated quirk of his lips, a shadow of his usual grin, closes his eyes, and sinks almost immediately into sleep.  One of the knots in the Doctor's heart loosens. Rose, on the next bed has fallen deeper into unconsciousness.  Now, needing to put on a show for no one but his ship, he can begin the work of fixing them. First, to tend to Rose's worst wound, and to set her shoulders.  He needs to heal the damage caused by them being held out of joint so long. He wishes everything would be so simple.

 

\--

_Somehow, the fact that they're human makes it worse.  She thinks maybe if they were scaly, or eight feet tall, or had twelve eyes—but no, the hands that buckled them firmly into place and the eyes that check over their work now with brisk precision are just like hers._

_If she feels betrayed, maybe she won't be so scared._

Her fever is rising.

 

_They're standing too close.  The leader is a man with straw blond hair and deep set earthy eyes, and his breath smell of something Rose can't quite identify.  Something rotting, maybe.  She fancies she can feel his air curling up her nostrils and down her throat tickling in her lungs, and she feels slightly sick._

The sheets are soaked with sweat. __  
  


_Each breath is more difficult to draw than the last.  She wants to seek out the Doctor's eyes, catch his crystal gaze like a lifeline, but she can't see anything—or maybe she can, everything keeps changing, just concrete and hard faces and the pungent scent of too many people's fear-sweat.  She can hear him, anyway, hear him breathing like her even though she knows he doesn't have to.  Mirroring the breaths she draws in and out of her own lungs, as if through mimicry he can take on the burden.  Maybe he can._

She's using up fluids faster than he can check the bag.  Her body fights.

_Before long she stops registering the man's voice as words, as anything other than the background noise on a sickly swirl of sensation and pain. She's on a ride that she can't get off, and she's lost the ability to even hold on tight, do anything other than feel._

 

Her teeth are clenched, her fists clenched, her whole body clenched.  It hurts to look at her, she's wound so tight.

 

_Let's talk about the scourge.  Or how her feet are burning, the skin stripped right off, her whole body a container ready to burst.  It's all too much.   They're watching her, shouting, and she can hear their voices as if underwater.  She wants to grab hold of them, keep them, so she doesn't dissolve and float away in this universe of pain.   She can't understand what they're saying, but it doesn't matter.  It doesn’t matter._

The sound of the dermal regenerator is harsh in his ears, and his body won't stop cramping. She moves almost constantly, and he imagines that the pain he is experiencing is pain he's taking from her, offering her relief.  He knows better.

 

_However hard she looks, there is only darkness._

\--

 

He twists and sweats in his sleep. Everything he is is going wrong. Dreamless, his body is protesting. He wants to wake, because the monsters are lurking in the shadows of his skull, but he can't seem to find a way out.  


Her body heals as she sleeps, the bruises shrinking and fading, the swelling receding, the lacerations closing up. But even as her fever drops, she dreams, or hallucinates, or maybe just drops from reality to somewhere else, somewhere dark and writhing—

It's too cold.  It's too hot.  There is a fist around her heart, squeezing tight, the muscle bulging out between the fingers.  Her lungs, too, constricted and empty.  She reaches out blindly, and a hand grasps hers.  Long fingers.  Calloused palm.  Gentle grip.  
  


Inside their box, they turn in emptiness. Alone, together. The outside presses in on them and howls, but the edges are sealed, and inside everything is still. Here is the tableau: the young woman in the bed, damp hair sticking to her neck.  The man in the bed, face shielded and curled in on himself in sleep. The man between them, checking machines, checking their single pulses.  Sitting on a chair with his hands laced and clenched together, a muscle ticcing in his cheek.  Staring ahead with steel blue eyes, before he jumps to his feet to check again, anything but stillness.  There is no speech, except the murmurs of the second man to the softly humming walls. The girl turns in her sleep and shudders.  She shouldn't turn that way.  Her shoulder is still bad. The man goes to her, the deep creases in his forehead, his bottomless diamond-hard eyes, his hands gentle. So gentle.

He is angry that the others died so quickly.

 

_They're looking at him like he's a freak-show, something slimy and bizarre.   He can't remember the last time he was self-conscious of his body, but right now he wants nothing more than to get his clothes back, or at least to wrap himself in a blanket where all those eyes can't touch his naked skin._

_But he can't.   And then there are their hands.   It doesn't matter.   It doesn't matter, think how many people have touched his body, how many strangers and friends have put their hands just there—but they're all around him, their breath on him and their hot skin, and he wants out, he wants away, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter._

_\--_

  


When Rose wakes, the light is amber and very soft, and her heart is clenched tight as a fist.  Tears she doesn't remember crying are stained across her cheeks.  Grounding herself in the present, in the soft sheets and familiar light, she moves and feels the pull of her body.  It aches, but there are no sharp pains, and she looks under her clothes—the Doctor must have dressed her, and that's another twist of comfort and of fear.  The marks are there, but fading, almost gone.

"Rose."

It's the Doctor, raising his head where he slumps in a chair in the corner, but immediately he's at her side, checking her pulse and forehead with what to him should be almost comical primitiveness. But there's no trace of humor in his face.

"How are you feeling?"

"Sore," she says. "And strange." In the head, she means, but she doesn't know how to say that.

The Doctor looks over to check the machines again, clearly worried.  "It's okay," she says.  "I'm all--I'm all healed up.  You did a good job."

He tries to smile at her, but it doesn't quite work.

"Is Jack awake?" she asks.

"He was," says the Doctor, "for a moment or two.  But then he went back to sleep."

She looks over her shoulder and there he is, curled on the next bed, facing away from her on top of the sheets. The Doctor follows her gaze. "He didn't say much," he says.  


\--

 

When Jack wakes up, he sees nothing but darkness, and his throat seizes up—he's back in that concrete room, drugged to blindness, helpless and waiting and—but then he hears the humming of the walls.  Something inside him soothes even before he places the sound.

He shifts, more deliberate than the panicked motion of earlier, and discovers he's on his side, his face buried in the dark cloth of his sleeves.  Which he supposes the Doctor put him in, and—unusually for him—he doesn't really want to think about that.  Any of that.

He extends his arms and lifts his head. Around him, just soft familiar light, curved familiar walls.  On one hand, maybe it's not good that he's familiar enough with the medbay to find it comforting.  On the other, he'll take what he can get.

"Jack!"

It's Rose.  He turns, and she runs up to the bed, then hesitates, like she's not sure if she's allowed to touch him.  It's a spike of sharp relief to see her, and that her injuries are apparently more or less healed.   The Doctor is behind her, more sedate, but Jack can seem the same worry in his eyes.

He dredges up a smile from somewhere. Not up to his usual standards, probably, but it'll have to do.  "Hey, sweetheart," he says.  "Don't hold back, can't I get a hug now?"

She smiles back, a little shaky but a solid effort, and launches into his arms.  He holds her, mindful of any injuries that might still be healing, and for a moment has to push away the swell of panic that comes with the sensation of being surrounded, touched, restrained.  He concentrates on the smell of her hair, breathes deep.

The bed dips.  "Good to have you back, Captain," says the Doctor. If they were any less close, his face would be impossible to read; as it is, though, it's a tapestry of sorrow and hope and guilt and compassion and fear and anger and relief.

He smiles, and for once doesn't try to control what his own face is saying.

"Good to be back." He looks around him, over at the other bed, with its rumpled sheets. "How long has Rose been up?"

"Not long," says Rose. "Only a few hours before you. It's been days, the Doctor says."

There's a lot of things that Jack could say to that, but in the end, he doesn't say anything.  He looks away, doesn't pick at the fabric of the sheets. The silence stretches. Finally, he says, "Got anything to eat?"  


\--  


Later, when they've eaten and dressed and slept a little more, they find themselves congregating in the library, a cozy room with overlapping rugs and couches and a ladder that slides around the shelves.  Rose feels a little odd, floaty, and when she tries to examine her feelings about what's happened it's like hitting a brick wall.  It makes her lungs feel too small and her skin too tight, and she still can't think or feel anything at all.  Just her body reacting, something dark climbing up her throat, and that strange blankness, a cloud bank of empty fog.  _Don't go here. Please._ She leaves it alone.

She walks slowly, trailing her fingers over the backs of the books, the smooth dark shelves, the unfamiliar technology holding still more thoughts and words.  The TARDIS must be translating the words on the outside for her, as she always does, but it all looks vague and meaningless anyway. Just lines and curves like snakes' tracks in the mud, or birds' footprints as they hop along the ground. The different textures feel good under her hand.

Jack has come in, silent. He settles himself on a couch, cross-legged, and the Doctor sits down on the other side of it.  None of them look at each other.

Finally, the Doctor says, "I don't really know how to do this.  For other people."

"Are you going to get impatient and kick us out, then?" Jack says.  It's a joke, or an attempt at one.  Rose can hear the expression on the Doctor's face without looking.

"You can stay forever," says the Doctor.  "Or. Well.  As long as you want.  You don't have to.  Do you, well, do you want to stay?"

She steps on the ladder and gives herself a push.  It glides smoothly along the rails.  She likes the noise the wheels make, and unfocuses her eyes so that the books slipping past become a blur of color.

"Sure, yeah," Jack says finally.  There's shame in his voice, and guilt.

"Good.  That's—that's good.  Rose?" asks the Doctor.

She tries to focus. It's harder than it should be. She puts out her hand to touch the shelves and the ladder slows.  Her head hurts.  "Okay," she says at last.  "That sounds okay."

"Okay," the Doctor says back.  His voice is almost a whisper.

No one says anything for a while.  


Later, a long time later, Rose says, "We need to go back.  To That Planet, I mean.  We need to—well—we need—"

"Yeah," says Jack. The Doctor watches them, his eyes unreadable.

The TARDIS hums and swings.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Physical torture of a female character. Rape (vaginal and oral) of a trans male character. Forced voyeurism. Rape and torture aftermath. Nightmares/flashbacks. Vague medical content. Death of unnamed villains. Transphobic violence and language and cissexism. Forced nudity. Nonconsensual outing as trans.  
> All torture, rape, and transphobia come from villains.
> 
> -In my head Jack, who is trans, has a fully-functional prosthesis that makes him undistinguishable from a cis man, but he doesn't wear it all the time, as he's comfortable with his body as is. Often he wears it if he's expecting to have sex or lose clothing in an environment unfriendly to trans people, or if he's having more dysphoria than usual.  
> -I, the author, am trans.


End file.
